Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary

Benazir Bhutto’s sixth death anniversary yesterday reminds us of the loss of a charismatic and courageous leader who stood for a democratic and progressive Pakistan. Her struggles against military dictatorship, beginning with the fight against the Ziaul Haq regime that hanged her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and ending with her struggle to move the country beyond General Pervez Musharraf’s grip on power remind us of the abiding memory and legacy of the youngest and first woman to be elected prime minister of a Muslim country in 1988: her amazing courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. After the overthrow of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government by General Zia’s military coup in 1977, Benazir had to suffer incarceration in horrendous conditions for years. When the regime finally relented because of her ill health brought about by the prison conditions, she was allowed to go into exile, only to return triumphantly in 1986 after martial law had given way to the Zia-engineered civilian government. A perusal of her political track record may convince some critics that BB’s record in opposition and struggle was far better than her accomplishments in office. But that critique is mitigated by the caveat that while she was in office twice, the powers that be hampered and hindered her ability to wring the changes in state and society she desired fully, while preventing her enjoying a full tenure in both her stints. Along the way, the Bhutto family had added two brothers to the toll the struggle had taken. In the second, Murtaza’s case, the brother was killed and the sister thrown out of office in a sinister conspiracy in 1996. The hounding through the courts that followed finally persuaded BB to opt for self-imposed exile for eight years. Being abroad did not mean BB was out in the cold. She continued to manoeuvre intelligently by persuading Nawaz Sharif, also in exile albeit forced, that the democratic forces needed to stand together if military rule was to be overcome now and in the future. This compact was enshrined in the Charter of Democracy, one of the finest documents in support of a democratic order produced in Pakistan’s chequered history. BB’s return in 2007 was accompanied by real and perceived threats to her life, a threat that was demonstrated in bloody fashion on October 18, 2007, the day of her return, in Karachi when her entourage was bombed, killing almost 200 of the PPP’s workers and supporters. Shocking as the incident was, in which BB escaped harm fortuitously, neither she nor her committed workers and supporters abandoned reaching out to the public for the sake of a democratic transition so sorely needed after Musharraf’s eight years of despotic rule. The fact that she did not live to see those hopes translated into reality is perhaps the biggest tragedy in the history of our benighted land. The BB who returned from her second exile had matured into a leader capable of much more than her admittedly considerable accomplishments before. Hence, the greater the loss to the country and its polity.

It must be admitted with regret that those who took up the mantle of BB’s political legacy after her departure from this world failed to perform in a manner worthy of their great late leader. Cronyism, nepotism, allegations of massive corruption and sheer demonstrated incompetence characterised the PPP government from 2008 to 2013. It was no surprise therefore that the electorate punished the party by reducing the country’s largest federal party with a presence throughout the country to a rump entity with a government in its traditional stronghold of Sindh, but with its credibility and appeal considerably dented. The party has been led since BB’s demise by former president Asif Ali Zardari. While an ostensible generational transition is in progress to Asif and BB’s children, particularly the heir-apparent Bilawal, it remains to be seen how far the next generation can transform the fortunes of the party by freeing themselves from the recent poor past and appealing to the youth bulge in our society. With regret it must also be recorded that despite being in power for five years, and four international and domestic investigations, the PPP was unable to complete the task of bringing BB’s murderers to justice. History may record this as the greatest failure of the party of all. Musharraf and some others finally stand indicted in the assassination case, but closure still seems a long way away.